Hey! I like his dojo. Homely. Not intimidating, like you're not going to be scared of scratching the lovely polished decor with a stray bokken. I'd improve it by fixing thin mats to two walls to allow safer collisions in this type of training.

I'd also like to apologise to Chris for my first post in this thread, I sounded too harsh and I didn't mean to be.

An improvement to the training would be to use it as an opportunity NOT for the unarmed guys to try to do aikido to the knifeman, but rather for the knifeman to train his knife attacks with a mind to using aikido to retain control if he is grabbed by his victims. Think about what Ueshiba or Takeda might do in this training situation. (Spill some blood?)
I'd show you what I mean but I'm not local enough.

Oh, one more thing : the unarmed guys who aren't holding onto the knife-arm might want to concentrate on chokes and koshinage?